But there is a limit, and beyond it one is no longer willing, one finds it too repulsive, to be a reasonable little rabbit. And that is the limit beyond which rabbits are enlightened by the common understanding that all rabbits are foredoomed to become only meat and pelts, and that at best, therefore, one can gain only postponement of death and not life in any case. That is when one wants to shout: "Curse you, hurry up and shoot!

I believe that more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

Not long ago I was much amused by imagining—what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world—what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke.

The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.

Any kind of death sentence is cruel. It doesn't matter what kind of death, I think the psychological punishment of knowing you're going to die is cruel.